Picture of the Month

Amanita flavoconia

This is a picture of the mushroom, Amanita flavoconia, commonly called "Yellow Patches". The summer of 2006 has so far been a wet, hot season in upstate New York and the woods are teeming with mushrooms. This image was made with a Nikon D2X camera, Nikkor 10.5mm fisheye lens, and natural light. Due to the extreme wide angle nature of the lens, the front element was only a few centimeters from the mushroom when the exposure was made.

Interestingly, Cornell professor George Atkinson first described this species in 1902. His photograph of the type specimen (below) and the specimen itself are housed in the Plant Pathology Herbarium. Atkinson was a prolific photographer, making thousands of glass plate negatives of freshly collected mushrooms. We are currently scanning his collection of photographs and they can be viewed on line at the Atkinson Collection.